“We know what works”

That headline — “We know what works” — is what makes this problem so frustrating. The problem is teen pregnancy and it is one that afflicts San Antonio, though gains have been made.

It was the topic of a luncheon Tuesday benefiting Healthy Futures of Texas, an organization led by Janet Realini whose aim to preventing teen pregnancies and unplanned pregnancies.

The organization and others have had some measure of success, with drops in teen birth rates but not equaling the drops occurring nationally. We are still in the top tier nationally for teen birth rates and this has implications for whether metro San Antonio prospers economically.

The organization highlighted some of the ways this problems manifests itself locally. The No. 1 reason girls drop out of high school is parenthood. It costs taxpayers $83 million a year to bear its teen child-bearing rate. Children of teen moms are more likely not to finish school themselves, not proceed to college and to become engaged in the criminal justice system. The county teen birth rate is 73 percent higher than the U.S. average.

But as speakers — including Mayor Julián Castro — noted there is a solution. He said, “We know what works.”

Castro received the “Estrella” award from Healthy Futures for his work on this issue. His SA2020 initiative has made it a goal to reduce teen pregnancy 15 percent by that year.

The city should have as its overarching goal, Castro said, “making sure our young people are prepared for the future.” Teen pregnancy, he noted, presents a major obstacle to that for all the reasons stated above.

He reprised an analogy he used in his speech at the Democratic National Convention last month in Charlotte. Life, he said, is not a sprint, nor a marathon. It’s a relay. Parents hand off their accomplishments and opportunities to their children. The children then ideally use these to carry the baton further.

Teen pregnancy, however, means “the relay has to start over and over again, with families having to go back to those starting blocks,” he said.

So, what works? Age-appropriate, evidence-based sexual education that goes beyond abstinence only. Many school districts do this — hence the drop in rates. But clearly not enough do.

Congratulations to all who have worked to bring San Antonio’s rate down. As they made it clear at this luncheon, however, they know that they need to take that baton and move it forward. We’ve still a ways to go.